3 ms·

Nobody credible thinks eradication is possible, because we would have to eliminate it from the extensive animal reservoirs. What, are we going to genocide every

• eanzenberg 6y ago
  Meow?
• abainbridge 6y ago
  Is there evidence that more than one person caught it from an animal? I haven't heard of any. I expect that is the kind of thing one can learn from genetic sequencing of the virus - ie when a new strain is seen that has multiple genetic differences from any previous sample from humans, that would be evidence for re-infection from an animal species were the virus had been circulating for a while.
  • __blockcipher__ 6y ago
    It literally came from an animal originally. That's what zoonotic means. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095063/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095063/ As for what that means for eradication: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise... > The targeted organism must not have a non-human reservoir (or, in the case of animal diseases, the infection reservoir must be an easily identifiable species, as in the case of rinderpest), and/or amplify in the environment. This implies that sufficient information on the life cycle and transmission dynamics is available at the time an eradication initiative is programmed. ^ This is why we can never eradicate it. There's a couple of other requirements. For example we could eventually pass this check: > An efficient and practical intervention (such as a vaccine or antibiotic) must be available to interrupt transmission of the infective agent.